This has nothing to do with skydiving but I am looking for a little help. One of my new students is hearing impaired. He has hearing aides and I was recently given an FM to use with him. I think that is what it was called, our district doesn't have a teacher specifically for deaf children. I will not get a consultation with the specialist unless there is a problem because he came to me so late in the year.

I don't think the FM is working and I have charged it over night. I am still raising my voice to get his attention if he is across the room. I had a friend take it outside the room and I couldn't hear her talking. My question is this...Should I have been able to hear her? Or is it related to my students hearing aide? He is only six so he can't really answer my questions.

Any help would be appreciated.

Kristin

edited to add~ in case I am calling it the wrong thing, he wears one around his neck and it has a little box with it. I wear one as well and it has a microphone.

Kristin, I wear hearing aids.. and I know what your talking about... although I've never used the FM loop.. the hearing aid have to be switched to pick it up.. normally there are three postions one switch is on / off other hearing aids like mine you open battery compartments to tirn it off. other switch is M T and M/T M is Microphone for normal convesation T is telephone magnetic coil pick up for using the telephone. and M/T is both hearing aid microphone and telephone coil pick up which is how FM loop works. also: be sure the batte

In reply to:

ry is install correctly.. lot 6 year old kids "play" with them and put them in backwards.. I should know I used to do that at that age..

our district doesn't have a teacher specifically for deaf children. I will not get a consultation with the specialist unless there is a problem because he came to me so late in the year.

Because of Public Law 94-142 which states:

Quote:

a free appropriate public education which emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs, to assure that the rights of handicapped children and their parents or guardians are protected, to assist States and localities to provide for the education of all handicapped children and to assess and assure the effectiveness of efforts to educate handicapped children

Why is it taking so long to get a staffing on this child and why isn't the child in a deaf educated program? Are there mainstream programs in your school district?

I would push the issue if you think the hearing aid for this child isn't working. I worked with one of those aids, and the deaf child could hear if the mainstream classroom teacher was in the bathroom.

Is there a hearing aid center in your town that you can have the device checked out at?

Here is the link for Public Law 94-142, just in case. I know you're a teacher and I'm sure you are well educated when it comes to the law. Good luck.

Welcome to life in tiny, title one, country school district! I was tired and in a rush to get out the door to pick up my son and I worded it a little wrong. My apologies. It is more that I do not know who I will get to talk with about this because the specialist we work with is on maternity leave and she comes from another district. My new friends just started on Thursday. There will be a staffing and an ARD, of course, then I will have more info. I do not know who will be there for her, however. I doubt I will get to corner them and get all the answers I would like when I am in a new situation. If I was in dire straits she would come over baby in tow. I just thought I'd get a few good ideas here faster than I would at school. And I have! Again, poor word choice, my apologies...

our district doesn't have a teacher specifically for deaf children. I will not get a consultation with the specialist unless there is a problem because he came to me so late in the year.

Because of Public Law 94-142 which states:

Quote:

a free appropriate public education which emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs, to assure that the rights of handicapped children and their parents or guardians are protected, to assist States and localities to provide for the education of all handicapped children and to assess and assure the effectiveness of efforts to educate handicapped children

Why is it taking so long to get a staffing on this child and why isn't the child in a deaf educated program? Are there mainstream programs in your school district?

I would push the issue if you think the hearing aid for this child isn't working. I worked with one of those aids, and the deaf child could hear if the mainstream classroom teacher was in the bathroom.

Is there a hearing aid center in your town that you can have the device checked out at?

Here is the link for Public Law 94-142, just in case. I know you're a teacher and I'm sure you are well educated when it comes to the law. Good luck.

yeah... that always cracked me up when i was a kid, when the teacher would forget to turn the fm off and i could hear em going to the bathroom. i'd turn my hearing aids up so that everybody around me could hear the noises. heh. anyway, yeah check the hearing aid and make sure the switch is in the right position. but maybe the kid's like me and just turns the hearing aids off so he doesnt have to listen to all the bullshit.

I used an FM unit frequently from high school through college. All of the FM units I had only sent the sound to the T-coil of a hearing aid. No non-aided person could hear through the FM unit. In addition, I could only hear what was transmitted through the FM unit. If another student is talking on the other side of the classroom from the teacher wearing the microphone, I wouldn't be able to hear what he/she said. The FM's purpose is to eliminate the background noises that can overshadow the teacher's voice. It focuses the sound on whomever is wearing the microphone.

FYI: Hearing loss is different for each person. Some may have volume loss but are well able to tell the difference between sounds. For example, they can tell the difference between "boat" and "goat." Their speech and aided hearing is often easy to comprehend. Others may have slight hearing loss, but their ability to distinguish between sounds is very poor. Their voices may have a different quality than hearing people. Some people have both hearing loss and an inability to distinguish between sounds.

Please be extremely patient and aware of your new student. Many hearing people don't realize how isolating hearing loss can be - especially among children.

Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions. I'll be happy to share whatever I can.

It's absolutely essential for that child to be placed in a proper deaf educated program so the child will have a fair chance to be able to learn among with hearing children. It would be very sad to see the child fall behind in education simply because the school district couldn't provide for that child. Please check into it. As a deaf person, I started out in a specialized program for hearing-impaired children in elementary and middle school. I was able to move on to mainstream classes by time I was in seventh grade with aid of interperters. If it wasn't for the specialized program, I doubt I'd be here right now.

As for FM, I'm not really a big supporter of it. It works for some people and it didn't do anything for me. I'm profoundly deaf (120% hearing loss in both ears) and the teachers still forced me to wear FM when I couldn't hear anything. The only time I could hear is when I got a cochlear implant but that's another story for another time. If that child still couldn't hear you with FM, it is likely that the child is profoundly deaf, same as me. The best thing you can do is to see an audiologist and determine how serious is the child's deafness.

Flyingdeafie said,

Quote:

Please be extremely patient and aware of your new student. Many hearing people don't realize how isolating hearing loss can be - especially among children